Battle of Hastings Simon Schama

The core of the army was provided by the 5000 thanes or noble men of England, and in addition, there were the 13,000 part time soldiers known as the feared and mobilized by their lords, obliged to give the king two months service each year. With amazing speed, this army was stationed along the south coast. By August 10th, William had his army in place along the Normandy coast, two great fighting forces bent on each other's annihilation, faced each other across a little strip of water to determine the destiny of England. There they sat William waiting for a southerly wind that never came, and Harold, waiting for William, who never came. This waiting was particularly serious for Harold. By the first week of September, he kept the field in battle position for at least two weeks longer than their two month obligation. What's more, it was now harvest time. So, with who knows what misgivings and our needs in us on September the 8th, Harold demobilized the feared and sent the soldiers home. En route to England, he stopped here in the Viking earldom of the orkneys to pick up yet more men and yet more ships to add to his already formidable fleets. Expectations must have been high, the Norse men could almost smell triumph in the summer winds. 

There would have been feasting and singing and the reading of poems, some of them doubtless written by hardrada himself. And it may be here that tostig joined the Viking fleet. If he did, and if you looked out at the water and saw the 300 ships, his little heart must have skipped a beat to think of the catastrophe of waiting his brother together, testing and hardrada would be unstoppable invincible. Or would they? Harold traveled from London picking up his army on the way, covering a 187 miles in four days. 37 to 45 miles a day. Imagine then thousands of men going as fast as their horses or in many cases as fast as their legs could carry them. Up the great north road to peterborough, Lincoln, tadcaster, the ultimate high impact hike with a heaviest backpacks imaginable. Complacent with victory, hardrada and tostig traveled with just one third of their army, 8 miles east of York to Stamford Bridge, where they had arranged to collect 500 hostages. For what they saw on the banks of the river derwent was not a forlorn group of hostages, but a massive army. Their weapons glittering like sheets of ice as the Viking barred put it, tossed it new, it meant trouble. It was his big brother. Harold fort, one of the bloodiest battles in English history. It was the English who broke the Viking line, and the remaining Norse warriors cowered around their chiefs. We must imagine the great hardrada swinging his axe beneath the land waste of flag before finally sinking down with an arrow in the throat. 

Tostig picking up the Raven flag and in his turn being cut down. The carnage was so complete that it took just 24 of a 300 ships that had sailed to England to return a pitiful remnant of the north army back to Norway. With great haste, the duke went to sea with his fleet sailing swiftly to the coast of England. Their first sight of land would have been the great cliffs at beachy head, and they landed in the nearby sheltering harbors of pevensie. An old Roman fort guarded the beach within its now empty shell Williams men erected a prefabricated timber castle that would later be rebuilt in stone, as if declaring that they were now the heirs to the Romans. Expeditions for food and forage from the base camp took the usual form, burning everything that couldn't be seen as striking terror into the hearts of the locals. Williams soon discovered there was no easy route to get from pevensie to London. The country behind the town was waterlogged, crossed by little river valleys that fed into the sea. But there was one old Anglo Saxon trail that could take him to the Roman road going north through Kent, and it was for mastery of this ancient muddy rutted track that the most grueling battle in early British history would be fought. Having beaten back a threat of the Vikings and his own brother. It must have seemed inconceivable to Harold that he was going to have to do it all over again within a week or two. 

It would not be easy, who could he call on the bruised and battered remains of his army. It would be a long shot. But after Stanford bridge, perhaps Harold felt that he could actually trust his gamblers luck. Besides, Williams public name calling Harold the perjured Harold the oathbreaker Harold the perfidious have made it personal now a mortal deal. So let the hand of God decide who is the righteous party, who would prevail. Harold left London at full speed. He gathered what he could of a new army by an old gray apple tree. An ancient blasted tree that stood on a hill at the crossing at the track leading out of Hastings. There Harold planted his banner, the dragon of Wessex. The Normans called this place sarlacc, which means Lake of blood. Imagine yourself then on the morning of Saturday, the 14th of October 10 66. You're a Saxon warrior, a house scarlet that happens, and you've survived Stamford Bridge. You know your position here couldn't be better. You stand on the brow of the hill and look down hundreds of yards away at the opposition. All you have to do is to prevent the Normans from breaking through to the London road. They had the horses, but then they have to ride them uphill. You look along the hillside and you see a densely packed crowd of English men. At the front of the house calls a wall of solid shields and with them the axe men. But behind them, the part timers, the fighting farmers who must have time to find their courage. 

Download the foot of the hill, you can hear the winning of Norman horses. And what sounds like the chanting of psalms. You're a Norman foot soldier and you hope to guard the gentleman on horses know what they're doing. All around you and you can hear the scraping of metal, the sharpening of blades, the mounting, a horses. You look up to the brow of the hill and you see a thin glittering line of men and you cross yourself and you finger the rings on your coat of mail, your horberg and wonder just how solid they are. You wonder what use they're going to be against some axe. You've never seen axes in battle before, but then you catch sight of the papal banner and take heart. Surely God is on your side. The real beginning must be imagined as the cavalry raced up the hill one by one, getting into range. Hearing the rhythmic chance of utz utz out out from the saxons and then hurling their javelins at the front line. Then came the slow advance of the archers and loosing their first arrows under a hail of enemy spears. And finally, the foot soldiers breaking into a run behind them. And then there was just the murderous smashing and crashing of horses, the slicing and thrusting of weapons, screams, cries of the wounded and dying. 

If the axeman stood firm against the oncoming horse, he'd still only get one good swing. If he missed, he was left open to the slash of the sword from the rider above. It was the initial success of the English that also threatened their downfall. On the left flag of William's army horses stumbled and retreated, the right Flank of Harold's army, many of them inexperienced fieldsmen decided to chase them down the hill. But Harold always conservative in his tactics refused to allow others to follow. So at this point, he seems to have lost momentary control of his own troops who couldn't resist following the horsemen. Elated by the thought that the duke of Normandy was lost. But William threw back his helmet to prove he was very much alive. He rallied the ranks of the Norman center around the rear of the pursuing saxons and set about slicing them to pieces. The battle wasn't over yet. It was going to take at least 6 hours to decide. The Bayer Tapestry is shockingly explicit and exposing the extent of the carnage, the mutilation. But it was the English army that was eventually and very, very slowly ground down. 

William began exploiting weak points, settling into an alternating rhythm of archers and cavalry. The arrows now shot high into the air and fell not onto the front line, but the heads of the unprotected men behind them. How did Harold himself die? Lately, there's been an attempt to read the death scene in the Tapestry as though he was the figure cut down by the horsemen. Not the warrior pulling the arrow out of his eye. The story you and I grew up with. But it seems to me perfectly clear that the words Harold Rex occurred directly and significantly above the arrow struck figure. Then certainly the knights would have been on him, cutting him down, leaving him, disemboweled. The fans bravely mounted a last stand, defending the body of their king, but for many it was now a lost cause. It was time to save one's neck to get out of the way. There is such sad stories of what follows and perhaps some of them are true. One of them has heralds lava, Edith swan neck, walking through the heaps of gory corpses to identify the dead king by marks on his body known only to her. What we do know is that around half the nobility of England perished on that battlefield.